


new beginnings

by everythingsux



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), First Kiss, M/M, One Shot, Pining, sorry I don't make the rules - Freeform, they're in high school modern day and eddie loves tik tok, this is a fic no one asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:25:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23310115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingsux/pseuds/everythingsux
Summary: To Richie, Eddie had always been different. In the scorching heat of the summer, things between them start to change.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84





	new beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> this is a modern day high school AU that takes place in the summer that focuses heavily on eddie's obsession with tik tok mainly bc of a specific tik tok that i saw and was like wouldn't that be cute if that was richie and eddie and it's so niche so i was like i guess i have to write it  
> so enjoy this fic that literally no one asked for  
> 

The warm summer air felt heavy and calm, as the crickets chirped in the distance and the frogs croaked by the water. Richie was sitting on the picnic blanket, propped up back to back with Beverly, as they passed a cigarette back and forth.

Stan was sitting across from them, propped against the log they had all dragged over for seating a couple summers ago. He was reading his bird encyclopedia, with his knees tucked up and a wide brimmed khaki sunhat shielding the bright rays of mid-July sun. 

Eddie was laying with his head was resting softly on Richie’s thigh, his baseball cap covering his face, blocking the sun, and a layer of SPF 100 covering him everywhere else. Richie was acutely aware of every movement he made, and every movement Eddie made, for fear that any wrong move might send Eddie scrambling away, as if he were an easily frightened bird that Stan might be so keen to observe, unknowlingly perched on a human leg. 

But Eddie didn’t scramble away. Every moment he was laying on Richie, his touch scorched into taller boy’s leg, and even though the contact made Richie’s heart thunder in his chest and his palms sweat, he’d do anything to hold that shred of contact as long as he could.

For Richie, Eddie had been different. He always was, from before Richie was old enough to put his finger on why. Stan was Richie’s best friend for as long as he could remember, because their parents were friends since they were very small. Derry was a small town, and Jewish people seemed to have a magnetic pull to each other, a instinctual need to stick together. Stan and Richie got along well, in spite of their differences. Perhaps even because of those differences. Richie knew what it was like to have a best friend. That was familiar. The platonic love and trust. Eddie was different.

Richie and Eddie met in the third grade. Stan and Bill had introduced them, because Stan and Bill were in the same class and had become good friends, and Bill was to Eddie what Stan was to Richie. 

Eddie always called him Big Bill, even though when Richie met him, Bill was average height for a nine year old, and around the same height as Richie. Eddie, not so much. The kid was vertically challenged. Half a foot shorter than Richie, and he remembers because they recorded their heights in Sharpie on the doorframe in Bill’s basement as they grew up. The growth spurt Eddie was looking forward to never seemed to show up, he always remained the smallest of the group. 

The group. Richie’s friends that he accumulated slowly until that one summer in 2016, when they all fell together in such a way that felt entirely complete, in some sort of indescribable way. They became the Losers Club. They built a clubhouse. They fought off Henry Bowers. Their bond as friends strengthened in a way that they didn’t even really understand. But it was special. That much they knew. To Richie, Eddie was the most special. 

Richie’s phone lit up, and as he glanced over to it, Bev’s had also lit up where it was sitting next to Richie’s. A message in the group chat, Richie could assume. From one of the other 3/7ths of the Losers that wasn’t presently at the Quarry. Probably a meme.

He glanced back over to Eddie, where he could observe the steady rise and fall of the boy’s bare chest, where it had once been wet from swimming in the quarry, but the sun had remedied. 

They had all started to grow into their bodies. Richie was still tall and lanky, but he’d started borrowing his Dad’s free weights from the basement in an effort to see some definition in his bony limbs. It was starting to pay off, too, he was still lean, but there were underlying muscles that were starting to show in his awkward teenaged reflection.

Beverly had filled out her curves, which was especially noticable on days like today when she would strip down to her bra and underwear to jump in the quarry like they used to as kids. If he’d been someone else, Richie considered, he would have found her nearly naked form completely unbearable. But to him, she was just Beverly, still as beautiful as ever, just with wider hips and larger breasts. However as the years past, Ben and Bill’s secretive and shared, yet wholly individual fasination with Bev and her curves wasn’t lost on Richie. He also doubts it was lost on Bev.

The boys all got taller and less gangly. Ben’s weight levelled out a bit as he got taller, allowing the older kids to stop teasing him for his weight, but he retained the squishiness that the group had always loved him for. Mike got much taller, and stronger as he took on more labour at the farm, and the high school football team had acquired him because of it. 

Eddie’s ascent through puberty was one Richie struggled through. He watched in awe as the short huffy little freckled boy with carefully combed back espresso brown hair, that tanned so easily in the summer sun despite the layers of sunblock his mother would slather him in, slowly evolved, growing taller, his body becoming lean and defined from being on the swim team. His jaw becoming more angular as he lost his childhood softness. His hair growing into fluffy waves as he refused to cut it and stopping styling it the way his mother used to. She was insistent that Eddie get a haircut. “Good boys get haircuts and keep their hair neat and tidy,” Richie remembered Eddie relaying, recreating his mother’s characteristic shrill whine. Richie laughed at that then, feeling proud of Eddie for standing up to her, even in little ways. 

It happened similarly slowly for Richie, the evolution of his friend turning into his good friend turning into his best friend turning into his _oh shit this might be a more than friends_ type of friend turning into his _my crush on you burns hotter than this midsummer sun_ type of friend. With the sun beating down on him, burning the skin he neglected to apply sunblock to, the touch of Eddie on him burned hotter. His eyes again wandered down to Eddie’s softly breathing chest and lean torso and the faintest whisper of hair at his belly button leading down into his shorts, Richie couldn’t handle the heat rising in his stomach any longer. He placed a finger in his mouth getting it sufficiently wet, and then removed it with a wet pop and snaked it down to where Eddie was laying peacefully on his thigh. He wiggled it into Eddie’s ear and Eddie jumped up with a yelp. 

“Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that, you asshole!” The baseball cap had fallen unceremoniously to Eddie’s side in the commotion, and Eddie shoved Richie. “Do you know how many germs are in a human mouth and you just put them in my ear, you sick fuck!” Eddie had pushed Richie away from Bev and toppled him over, and Eddie got right up on top of Richie as he’d shoved him onto his back. He pinned him down to the ground by his shoulders and leaned in so his face was above Richie’s.

Richie lived for this. He found endless ways to get Eddie’s attention on him, usually by means of grossing him out with something. He was easy to gross out, and it always provided the same adorable heated dramatic reaction. 

“I should just spit right in your mouth,” Eddie said, aiming for a threat but lacking all of the malicous edge. 

“That sounds hot,” Richie countered, adding onto it with a wink and a quick lick of his upper lip. 

“Ugh, gross! You’re disgusting!” Eddie pulled away and sat up with a sour look on his face. 

“You wanna choke me, too, Eds?” Richie asked cheekily as he sat up, Eddie scrambling off of him. 

“Shut up, Richie!”

“I usually only do BDSM shit with your mom, but I’m glad to see the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Beep fucking beep, Richie!” Eddie exclaimed, securing his baseball cap back on his head. 

A serene jingle began to fill the space around them, and Richie recognized it immediately as Eddie’s ringtone. Eddie looked down, and cursed as he read the name. Richie didn’t need to see the screen to know. 

“Speak of the she-devil,” Richie said quietly.

“Don’t answer it, babes,” Beverly offered. “Let it go to voicemail.” 

Eddie took a deep breath and nodded, silencing the call with a click of the lock button. He looked down at the screen, informing him that “Ma” was still indeed calling despite the lack of sound. “Oh fuck,” he said as the call disappeared, but gave way to a list of missed calls and voicemails. “I should probably get going, she’s gonna be pissed.”

“I’ll walk you home, Eds,” Richie said, standing and brushing the dirt off of himself. 

“If you insist,” Eddie replied, gathering his things and putting his clothes back on. 

“I should probably get going, too, it’s getting kind of late,” Stan said, placing his bookmark into his book and standing. 

“Well I guess I should get going, too,” Beverly added, getting up from where she was laying on the blanket. “I’m not just gonna sit here and chainsmoke until sundown.” 

“Chainsmoking until sundown, band name, called it!” Richie bantered. 

“You can’t just keep calling band names, Richie,” Eddie said clipping his fanny pack around his hips. “I don’t even think you’re ever gonna start a band.”

“But if I ever wanted to, dearest Spaghetti, I have a myriad to choose from.”

Richie and Stan folded up the blanket, while Bev and Eddie cleared up the rest of the group’s things and they headed back into town. 

***

Richie browsed through his phone, flipping between social media apps mindlessly as The Office played in the background in the basement. Richie’s parents had gotten him a PS4 for Christmas last year and when it wasn’t playing Netflix on low volume in the background of Richie’s ADHD attention span, it was usually either playing Red Dead Redemption or Overwatch. Sometimes when Eddie was over they’d play Rocket League, but most of the time Eddie was happiest to just watch Richie play whatever single player game he’d been into at the time.

A text from Eddie appeared at the top of Richie’s screen. 

“Rich! Check Tik Tok!”

Richie smiled, exiting out of messages and tapping the Tik Tok app. It had apparently been a while since he last checked the app, a couple messages from Eddie had accumulated. All of the Losers had accounts on the app and sometimes shared videos with eachother, but Eddie was the most avid Tik Tok user, he even sometimes posted his own. 

Richie scrolled through the videos, the first in the list being a cat scratching on a shower stall in a rythmic kind of way and the guy filming singing a country ditty over the sound. The second video was of a cute blonde girl playing the bass to Tame Impala’s The Less I Know The Better. The third video was of a young girl and a slightly older girl with captions over them saying “Tik Tok Era” and “Vine Era” while the audio played some iconic vines and the slightly older girl labelled “Vine Era” lip synced to all of them flawlessly while the younger girl only knew two. Eddie captioned it as “Why is this you and me even though we’re like the same age???”

The fourth and last video was of a guy and a girl dancing to Supalonely by BENEE, and Eddie captioned it as “Can we learn this dance pls!!”

Richie blushed a little thinking about dancing with Eddie, and he put his face in his hands to recover. 

“Sure Eds, anything for you,” he wrote and hit send.

He clicked on Eddie’s name at the top of the screen and it brought him to Eddie’s profile, where Richie had been featured a couple different times in goofy scenarios. Eddie’s most recent video, however, Richie hadn’t seen before. He tapped on it. 

It was a video of Eddie dancing. Richie’s throat went dry. The song scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Savage by Megan Thee Stallion. Eddie was dancing. And he was _good_ at dancing. And it was kind of provocative. There was a lot of ass movements and Richie was suddenly more aware of Eddie’s ass than he’d ever been. He felt his dick stir in his shorts. 

He exited out of the app. “Nope!” he said out loud, returning to instagram. 

***

“So then it’s like ‘drinking’ then body roll body roll.” Eddie was patiently going through the moves of the dance slowly with Richie, because he definitely wasn’t as good of a dancer as Eddie, but he was giving it his best shot. “And then it’s like thinking thinking, hand up hand up.” 

Richie was following Eddie’s movements in the mirror as they went through the moves. 

“You’re getting it, though,” Eddie said with a contagious smile. “Let’s start from the top.”

They went through the whole dance many more times before they were actually fast enough to do it to the song. To Richie’s credit, he did pick it up quite quickly, and they recorded it a couple of times before landing on a good enough one to post. They watched the video together, and Richie laughed to himself. 

“What?” Eddie asked. 

“You’re just cute.” 

Eddie just blushed and went quiet, and Richie was a little thrown off that he didn’t quip back with some sort of fast paced comeback. 

“Cute cute cute,” Richie said to fill the suddenly deafening silence as he reached out and poked Eddie’s cheek. 

Eddie swatted him away. “Quit it,” he said quietly, clearly not super annoyed. 

Richie flopped onto his bed, and Eddie sat down on the edge of it. Richie felt his fingers twitching and a deep yearning start to rise in the pit of his stomach. “Ugh,” he said aloud.

“Hmm?” Eddie looked up from his phone. 

“I want a cigarette, but I don’t have any. I forgot to get Bev to buy me a pack.”

“That’s a good thing,” Eddie said quietly. “I think you should consider quitting, anyways. It’s really bad for you, and I’m not even just saying that because my mom has told me basically everything is ‘bad for you,’ it’s coming from actual research.”

Richie sat up from where he was laying on the bed. “You did research? Why?”

“Because I care about you, dickhead,” Eddie said with a shove. “It sucks to see you basically poisoning yourself. I saw this one photo of a crosssection of healthy lungs and then there was a crosssection of a smoker’s lungs and they were all black and—”

“Eddie.”

“Yeah?”

“You want me to quit?”

“I mean, I kinda do, yeah. It also smells disgusting I can smell it on your clothes and taste it when it’s in the air,” Eddie started to ramble again.

“Is that why you don’t wanna kiss me Eds, because I taste like cigarettes?” Richie wiggled his toe into Eddie’s side, tickling him, and Eddie shoved him away.

“Please, I don’t wanna kiss you. Besides, I imagine it absolutely would taste like putting your tongue in an ashtray.”

“You been imagining putting your tongue in my mouth, Kaspbrak?” Richie joked, poking Eddie again with his foot. 

Eddie shoved his leg away again. “Beep beep, Richie,” he said, as Richie noticed his face getting redder. But Richie dropped it. Those were the rules. The unspoken rules. Richie could continue to push with a joke until one of the Losers beeped him. Then he was to drop it, no further questions asked. This one was hard to drop with no further questions. 

Richie sat up. “Post that Tik Tok, champ. We’re gonna go viral.”

“The only viral thing you’re gonna get is an infection.” 

“Yowza!” Richie patted Eddie on the back. “Eduardo gets off a good one!”

***

Once again, Richie found himself scrolling aimlessly through social media, as he often found himself doing, with Parks and Rec on the television in the background. 

His phone pinged. “Rich!” the text read. “Check Tik Tok!”

It pinged again. “Also! Our dancing video got 50 likes!!! That’s hardly viral but its a start!!”

Richie tapped the Tik Tok icon and went to Eddie’s profile. Sure enough, their video had gotten 50 likes exactly.

He opened up his messages app. “You’ll have to somehow prove that you didn’t make 50 Tik Tok accounts and like it 50 times,” he typed.

Eddie responded quickly, and with two middle finger emojis.

Richie toggled back over to Tik Tok and checked his DMs. Eddie had sent him three new videos. 

The first was a video of three Warios in Super Smash Bros. following along to the Back it Up challenge, and Eddie had written “I think you ghostwrote this Tik Tok,” as the caption.

The second video was accompanied by the song Death Bed by Powfu, a really soft pretty song. The first text in the video read “I saw this trend where people kiss their boy best friends” with a girl in the corner of the frame. The camera pans over to a boy punching a little punching bag. It cuts to them dancing together in a mirror with the text “Him and I always flirt” and cuts to him playing video games. Then it cuts to him reacting to something off screen and the text says “And today I decided to kiss him” and the girl gets his attention and holds his jaw as she kissed him, and he gets it and kisses back and puts his hand on her waist. Eddie captioned it with two little cute emojis with the big puppy dog eyes. 

Richie didn’t want to read into it. He didn’t want to wonder what Eddie meant by it. He didn’t want to lay awake at night thinking about it. So he didn’t. He wrote it off as just a cute video.

The third video Eddie sent was a girl on rollerskates in a rollerskate rink dancing to Say So by Doja Cat. So, Richie considered, there was nothing to read into.

***

One cool night nearing the end of July, Richie and Eddie walked home from the skatepark. Richie wanted to go beause had some tricks he wanted to practice, and Eddie was happy to tag along if not just to cheer him on and sometimes record videos of him failing and sometimes succeeding. Usually falling though. 80-20. 

Now they walked as the heat from the day was starting to level to a low simmer, and the sun was just starting to descend over the horizon. 

“A good productive day, Eds! I feel like I’m making decent progress. I’ll be Tony Hawk by the end of the summer!”

“You’ll be like… Tony Finch more like. Or like… Tony…Chickadee.”

Richie chuckled. “That’s a good one Eds. Delivery could use a little work though. It’s all about the confidence,” Richie said as he swirled around in front of Eddie and brushed his chin with his fingertips. Eddie blushed at Richie’s touch. 

Richie felt a little fuzzy inside, like he didn’t know where to go from there. They were still walking side by side, but now the silence between them was getting to be too much. The little things that used to gross Eddie out seemed to not work as well anymore. 

Richie’s fingers accidentally grazed Eddie’s, and he pulled his hand away, trying not to be suspicious, and he pulled Eddie into a headlock, giving him a nougie instead. 

“Ow! Ow! Rich! Stop!” 

Richie released him, laughing, and Eddie ran his fingers through his hair where Richie had messed it up, his angered face melting back into a distrusting side eye, which Richie almost thought he detected a hint of a smirk in. 

He threw his arm around the shorter boy as they approached the corner store. 

They both got slushies, Eddie got one specifically to spite his mother because she never lets him have them because of the “bacteria that must be floating around in those god awful machines, no one ever cleans the inside of those things, Eddie-bear, they’re just disease dispensers flavoured with coloured sugar syrup!” 

Richie makes sure to take him to get slushies in the summer because he knows Eddie isn’t usually allowed to have them. Richie wants more than anything to be that escape for him. 

They sat on one of the concrete curb stops outside of the corner store for a while, talking. Once Richie finished the slushie, he subconciously chewed the straw until Eddie noticed and pointed it out.

“You’re really going to town on that straw Rich, you okay?”

“Yeah… I’m just really craving a cigarette right now, and I’m trying to quit.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A little birdy told me it would make my lungs all black. And even though that’s really punk rock, I want my lungs to continue to work.”

“I’m really glad, Richie,” Eddie started, before looking down at the straw one more time. “Wait here, I have an idea.” Eddie stood up and disappeared back into the convenience store, returning a couple minutes later with a bag of lollipops. 

“You may rot your teeth in exchange for healthy lungs, but that’s the lesser of two evils I think.”

“You’re a genius.” Richie stood up and pulled Eddie into a hug. 

***

A couple days later, Richie meets Eddie and Bev at the clubhouse. It’s not entirely on purpose, Richie meant to go there just to clear his head, but he walks in on Bev painting Eddie’s nails. 

“Sorry to interrupt guys, is it alright if I come in?”

“Of course!” Bev chimes. 

Richie hops to his feet from the ladder and walks over, sitting next to Eddie where Beverly is painting his nails a royal blue colour. 

“Bev wanted to do it, we were just fucking around and wanted to see what it would look like. I have to take it off right away anyways, my mom would flip if she saw it.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Eds.” 

Richie could visably see the stress and worry that was quickly accumulating fall away from Eddie. As if Richie would have judged Eddie for getting his nails painted. 

“Can you do mine, next?” Richie asked, and Bev smiled and nodded, looking at Eddie and then back at Richie. 

They sat in the clubhouse goofing around while Beverly tried to keep Richie still enough to get a decent coat of the royal blue laquer on his nails, while Eddie scrubbed the polish off of his own nails with acetone on a tissue. Richie wouldn’t need to scrub it off, he knew his parent’s wouldn’t care. He doubted that they’d even notice. A blessing and a curse perhaps. 

After Beverly finished with Richie’s nails, Richie dropped himself into the hammock, while Bev reminded him to be careful about smudging them while they dried. Soon Richie found Eddie joining him on the hammock as he so often did. As they grew older the hammock became less and less suitable for both boys to lay on at the same time, but it didn’t stop them. Eddie layed opposite to him, his tanned legs draped over Richie’s arm. Richie looped his arm around and placed his hand on Eddie’s leg, just resting it there gently. 

Beverly stood up. “Sorry guys, my dad just texted me, I gotta head home. I’ll catch you guys later,” she said, making her way towards the ladder. She brushed a hand on Richie’s shoulder, stopping to lean in towards him. “I’ve noticed you haven’t asked me to pick you up cigarettes in a while, Richie. I’m proud of you.” Then she climbed up the ladder and she was gone, the wooden door dropping closed with a dull clunk. 

Richie sighed. “I wasn’t even thinking about it at all until she mentioned it, fuck.”

Eddie sat up. “You’re doing really well though, Rich. Do you have any of those lollipops with you?”

“Yeah there’s one in my pocket but I can’t get it because my fucking nails are wet.”

“Which pocket?” Eddie asked, leaning forward.

“My left,” Richie said, wondering if this was actually headed where he thought it might be. Eddie leaned forward futher into Richie’s space, slipping his hand into the taller boy’s pocket. Richie cursed his brain for thinking inappropriate thoughts as his best friend’s hand was in such a close proximity to his dick. 

Eddie fished out the red lollipop, sitting back and looking down at it and pulling off the plastic wrapper. Richie’s head was in a fog, a fuzzy teenage hormone induced fog of slight arousal. He watched in awe as Eddie’s eyes flicked up to meet his and he slowly brought the lollipop to his own mouth, and Richie couldn’t help but let his mouth fall open, watching Eddie slowly lick then suck on the lollipop. 

Then Eddie leaned forward, the lollipop still in his mouth, until he was back into Richie’s space. Richie felt like he was about to explode, or like he was just about to die right then and there. If Eddie had been one inch to the right, Richie was sure he would feel the growing hard-on in his jeans. 

Close enough to him that Richie could smell the vanilla lavender fabric softener his mother uses, Eddie slowly pulled the lollipop out of his mouth and placed it gently into Richie’s open mouth. Richie felt like his brain was malfuctioning, in disbelief, his eyes wide and his mouth still agape. He tasted the cherry of the lollipop on his tongue, wondering if he could really taste Eddie on it or if his imagination was just filling in the gaps.

Eddie was still impossibly close, leaning over Richie, when a noise startled both of the boys and they leapt away from each other. Richie’s head whipped back in a confused daze, and he saw Bill descending the ladder down into the clubhouse, followed by Stan. 

“Hey guys,” Eddie said sheepishly, his hand on the back of his neck, and when Richie looked back over a blush was spread over his cheeks. Richie was still at a loss for words, confused as to what even happened, his dick still half hard from the whole ordeal. Bill and Stan seemed to be oblivious. 

“We have enough players for Monopoly, you guys wanna play?” Stan asked as he flipped through their game collection. Richie was still recovering and trying to act chill, despite his head spinning going from Eddie on his lap to something as mundane as playing Monopoly with some pals. Eddie didn’t seem to be as bothered, as he hopped up right away, and took a seat next to Bill on the floor of the clubhouse were they were gathering around the board game.

Richie was confused, wondering how Eddie could just snap back to reality in an instant. Were they really going to continue with normalcy, pretending none of that happened? Eddie’s eyes flicked up to meet Richie’s in a dark and knowing gaze, a look just for Richie, a look that was telling Richie that, no, maybe they weren’t.

***

For the most part, they did return to normalcy. They went to the skatepark, learned more Tik Tok dances, played video games, swam in the quarry, hung out at Bill’s for movie nights. Richie had largely forgotten about it. At least it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind anymore. He still thought about it sometimes. Sometimes in his room late at night in the dark. Then afterwards he’d have to cover his face with a pillow and scream to try and escape the guilt he felt.

Richie had considered the possibilty of being attracted to boys. He’d considered the subsequent possibility of a lack of attraction to girls. The whole idea definitely had some legs to stand on. He thought about the way Eddie sometimes made him feel. He thought about the way Bev was supposed to make him feel. But those were just Richie’s friends. Two case studies.

He thought about other girls at school. Stretched his memory to recall what he could of the entire student body, grasping at the idea of finding attraction to one single girl at his school. But it just wasn’t there. 

Boys, then. Were there other boys at school that Richie found attractive, or had Eddie just been an anomaly? That was an easy question for Richie to answer, at least the last half. Eddie was always an anomaly. No one was like Eddie. 

But there had been other boys. Giving more weight to Richie’s possibilty of not being straight. The more evidence he’d been able to accumulate, the more it weighed on him like an unseen force, like a cold sweat, thinking this can’t be true. The guilt and the shame that had cascaded over him when his hand lingered on another boy’s for a little too long, and perhaps the other boy’s fondness had been misinterpreted. It had, turns out. Or maybe it hadn’t, but the appearance of the boy’s older, meaner, homophobic cousin had shifted the mood from fondness to frightened. Then frightened to malicious. 

Richie remembered that day so clearly. He remembered the warm air hitting his face as he sprinted out of the arcade and down the street, not stopping, not looking back. If anyone had even been chasing him, Richie wouldn’t have known. He just ran until he couldn’t anymore, until his legs threatened to give out and his heart thundered in his chest. He thought maybe if he just kept running he could run away from these feelings and away from the tears prickling in his eyes. 

He realized where he was running, as if he were on a set path without even putting any real thought into it. Like his feet were just programmed to go there, like a train on a track. But what would he even say? He couldn’t say this aloud, not to him. This felt too big, bigger than Eddie, bigger than Richie, bigger than Derry itself. Too big of a wound for Eddie to soothe. He also couldn’t handle the risk and the interwoven implication that telling him about this would present. He wasn’t ready. 

So he changed his course, hanging a left and sloping downhill instead. Towards the Standpipe. Towards the Clubhouse. He slowed to a walk as his legs got too tired to continue jogging. He walked up to the famous Kissing Bridge.

So many young lovers in Derry had pledged their love to the warped wood beams of the rickety old bridge. It was a strange declaration of love, carving initials into the rotting wood, but Richie understood it. He understood the weight and the longevity that a carving seemed to promise. _I’ll love you as long as our names stay carved in this wood. Forever doesn’t seem long enough._ Or it doesn’t seem realistic enough. 

Still, Richie stopped at the bridge. He looked upon the hundreds of names and initials. Full names were more public. Anonymity favoured initials. He looked around at the gravel and rocks where he stood at the shoulder of the road, and picked out a rock with a good edge to it. He looked around, careful that no one should sneak up on him. 

He found a small empty space on the wood, and carefully carved an R. The stone didn’t etch very deep into the wood, but it didn’t matter too much, the act in itself was the true catharsis. He added a plus symbol, and then scratched an E into the wood. Then he stood, throwing the rock as hard as he could into the waters of the Kenduskaeg that raged below. 

Richie wasn’t concerned about realism. The boards holding up this bridge will eventually rot and decay, bringing all of the old forgotten love down into the earth with it. That wasn’t enough. _I’ll love you longer than our names stay carved in this wood. I’ll love you as long as the sun continues to rise and the sky stays blue._

***

“Hey Richie?”

“Yeah Eds?” 

The group was back down in the clubhouse, sharing a bottle of beer that Mike’s grandfather had given him for doing extra chores. 

“Put these pens between your fingers,” Eddie said, handing him three pens.

“What? Why?”

“It’s a Tik Tok challenge, I’m gonna film it.”

Richie agreed, placing the pens between his fingers so they were sticking upwards. Eddie pointed his phone at him. 

“Okay, so,” Eddie pointed to the first pen. “What sound does a cat make?”

Richie meowed.

Eddie pointed to the second pen. “What sound does a dog make?”

Richie woofed.

Eddie pointed to the third and final pen. “What sound does a cow make?”

Richie mooed. 

Eddie moved his hand down to Richie’s fingertips. “And finally, what sound do you make during sex?” Eddie asked as he squeezed Richie’s fingers around the pens.

“Ah! Fuck!”

Eddie and a couple of the others that had been spectating the event broke into laughter. Richie threw the pens away, chuckling along because he couldn’t help but laugh seeing Eddie laugh. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Eddie?” Richie joked, tickling his side. “It sounds more like uhhh, uhhh, uhhh,” Richie moaned very realistically, making Eddie cringe.

“Ugh, gross, Richie,” Eddie laughed, Richie’s finger still wiggling in his side. 

“You asked!” 

“I wish I hadn’t,” Eddie squirmed free from Richie and looked down at his phone. “I’m gonna post the video though. It was a good reaction.” 

***

A couple days later, Eddie was over at Richie’s house, as he so often was during the summertime to escape the suffocating force of his mother at his own house. Richie’s parents didn’t mind, often times asking that Eddie stay for dinner. He would sometimes, even though his mom was usually even angier when he got home after already being fed. Eddie told Richie she was fearful about his allergies even though Eddie knew that Richie’s parents took care to avoid foods Eddie was allergic to. 

Now they sat on the sofa in Richie’s basement, Richie playing The Last of Us.

“Richie, can you pause it?” Eddie asked softly. 

“Yeah,” Richie said, pausing the game and looking over to the smaller boy. “What’s up, Eds?”

Richie’s breath caught in his throat as Eddie’s hand reached up to hold Richie’s jaw, the sudden and intimate contact electrifying Richie’s skin. 

Before he could say anything about it, Eddie was leaning in and kissing him, soft and impossibly slow, somehow better than Richie had ever imagined. Eddie’s lips parted ever so slightly, locking with Richie’s and Richie pulled him closer and closer still until he was straddling Richie’s thigh. Eddie pulled away instead of deepening the kiss any further, and Richie followed him until Eddie’s face was too far away. He stayed put on Richie’s lap though, and he pressed a quick chaste kiss to his lips that felt so innocent compared to the last. 

Breathless, Richie spoke to fill the silence. “What was that for?”

“I’ve wanted to for a while. And you know that Tik Tok challenge where you’re supposed to kiss your boy bestfriend that you’ve had a crush on?”

Richie swallowed dryly, his heart pounding in his chest. What was Eddie saying? He had a crush on Richie?

“You have a crush on me?”

“Yeah, idiot. You didn’t notice?”

“I guess I was too busy repressing the crush I had on you.”

Eddie laughed and leaned in again, pressing another kiss to Richie’s lips, a little deeper, allowing Richie to part his lips and flick his tongue over Eddie’s bottom lip. 

Eddie pulled away again, now he was the one flushed and breathless, and Richie was going crazy at the sight of it. 

“You’re good at that.”

“I’ve had lots of practice with your mom.”

“Beep fucking beep, asshole,” Eddie said, giving him a playful shove and then dropping his face into Richie’s shoulder, suddenly cuddling up to him. Richie held him, listening to Eddie breathing. “You always smell so good. Sometimes I catch it when I’m close to you and it drives me crazy,” Eddie whispered. 

“You know what drives me crazy, Eds?” Richie whispered. “You know what drives me absolutely bat-shit?”

Eddie hummed as if asking “What?”

“That shit you pulled in the clubhouse a couple weeks ago with that lollipop.”

Eddie giggled. “I wondered when you were gonna bring that up.”

“There wasn’t a single time before now that seemed appropriate.”

Eddie laughed. “Okay, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t trying to get you riled up. I had just finished talking to Bev about how I’d wished there was a way to show you how I felt without having to tell you.”

“Well I was certainly riled up after that. I had the most confused boner that I had to hide from Bill and Stan after that!”

“Did you actually?!” Eddie remarked, sitting up. 

“Yes!” Richie exclaimed. “That was hottest thing I’ve literally ever seen, Eds. You sucking on that thing and then putting it in my mouth I thought I was gonna die right there on the spot.”

Eddie blushed furiously. Richie couldn’t help but reach up and pull his cute face into a kiss, because he could now. 

***

Eddie showed Richie the video once he’d edited it all together. In his opinion, it was as adorable as the one Eddie had originally sent to him. It had footage of the two of them goofing around, dancing, and Richie playing video games. Text boxes that explained the challenge, explaining that they always flirt, and today Eddie decided to kiss him. Butterflies filled Richie’s stomach as he relived it. Especially the way Eddie found his way so effortlessly into Richie’s lap. 

They showed the rest of The Loser’s Club before posting it, as a sort of way of coming out to them. They were supportive, and for the most part, not surprised. 

Richie also took Eddie down to the Kissing Bridge where he’d carved their initials so many years ago. When he saw it, Eddie only laughed, and Richie was confused, until Eddie took his hand and lead him three feet to the left where he’d also carved their initials in reverse order. They laughed about it together, walking away from the bridge hand in hand. 

As the nights turned colder, one of the best summers of Richie’s life began to come to an end. The seasons were changing, but it wasn’t really an ending. Just a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> here's links to all the tik toks that i described in the fic in case anyone cares lol
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stU6un/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/styfUj/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stQ4LX/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stXn9A/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stChLm/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stXLrU/
> 
> https://vm.tiktok.com/stkqp9/
> 
> also the lollipop scene from hot summer nights inspired the lollipop scene in this fic  
> also also richie is referencing parks and rec with the band name called it joke but i'm referencing julien solomita bc i've never seen parks and rec  
> thanks for reading!! hope you enjoyed that self indulgent trash lol  
> i also attribute my ability to actually construct a completed fic (even tho it's just a one-shot) to the fact that i'm on quarantine bc of the coronavirus so that's lit that's also why i've been spending a lot of time on tik tok ok  
> also this may have been a modern day AU but obviously with no coronavirus cause who would enjoy that i wish my life was an AU with no coronavirus


End file.
